The Once and Future Kings

By Miguel-Anxo Murado

June 6, 2014

MADRID — It was a sign of the times that the news that King Juan Carlos of Spain was abdicating his throne appeared on the Twitter account of the royal house before the king announced it in person. Within minutes a follower had already posted a response — perhaps tongue in cheek, perhaps with genuine dismay: “Who’s going to take care of this account now?”

Well, Crown Prince Felipe will — at least in a figurative sense, as he will succeed his father. In another sign of the times, it will be a rare direct transfer of the Spanish crown from a ruling king to his son, an indication of how bumpy the relationship between the country and its monarchs has been historically. Juan Carlos’s own grandfather was ousted by a popular revolt in 1931, and his father never made it to the throne.

Now even his highly acclaimed 39-year reign has been brought to an end by a combination of bad health and scandals great and small, including allegations of financial wrongdoing involving his daughter, Princess Cristina. Such turmoil might have been overlooked under different circumstances, but it has become unforgivable in the hard-bitten Spain of the economic crisis, rife with unemployment, despair and anger.

Not long ago Juan Carlos was revered as the man who guided the country from the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco to a modern democracy and stood up to an attempted military coup in 1981. Last Monday it took a short surprise announcement to put an end to his reign.

Abdication, in fact, had seemed so improbable for so many years that Parliament never took the time to draft the applicable law. This embarrassing oversight will most certainly be resolved by an agreement between the two main parliamentary factions, but it has opened the door for smaller parties to demand a referendum on how, and even if, Felipe should succeed his father.

A referendum is unlikely, but the fact that we’re even discussing the idea here signals an important difference between Prince Felipe’s ascent to the throne and his father’s in 1975. The monarchy is no longer taken for granted in Spain. The institution may be enshrined in the Constitution, but it will have to fight anew to regain its credibility.

Of course, even in 1975 it was hard to distinguish between those who supported the monarchy and those who supported the charismatic Juan Carlos specifically — the difference between monarchists and so-called juancarlists. No such constituency exists for Felipe; he will have to build one, among a public that has lost trust in all national institutions, not just the royal family.

Though Felipe has multiplied his public appearances in recent years, and in particular in the last few months, he remains unknown to most Spaniards.

Discreet, in his mid-40s, sometimes slightly aloof, he will be the first Spanish king to hold a university degree (and from a foreign institution, Georgetown, no less).

Many of these traits will work to his advantage: his youth, his discretion, his worldliness, his apparent lack of ambition, even his perceived aloofness will be seen as a departure from his father’s gregarious ways. He had already been hailed as the harbinger of change 10 years ago when he married for love a former journalist, Letizia Ortiz, a divorced woman with no aristocratic credentials, much to the anger of hard-core Catholic conservatives.

Perhaps out of an excessive concern for this sort of criticism, the royal house put a damper on expectations that Felipe and Letizia would bring more change. Now the crown gives the royal couple a second chance to make a first impression. And unlike in 1975, nobody expects the monarchy to bring about dramatic change, but rather to change itself, to become more transparent, more austere. That should be the easy part.

Felipe’s biggest challenge may well be the looming political crisis in Catalonia. This northeastern region, Spain’s richest, has been gaining momentum in its push for independence.

The Catalonian government is planning a vote on separation by early November, a move the central authorities have pronounced illegal. The central government’s wait-and-see strategy has clearly failed, and many are demanding an iron-fisted approach that could be disastrous.

Felipe, on the other hand, has visited Catalonia frequently in the last few months and made subtle good-will gestures toward the Catalan leaders. This has created the hope among the moderates who favor a softer stance that he can now mediate the crisis, perhaps presiding over an overhaul of the Constitution that would allow for some form of federalization.

This is both an opportunity and a risk for Felipe. If he can play a positive, guiding role, he could reinvigorate the monarchy. But the truth is that, so far, Felipe’s visits to Catalonia have only managed to anger conservatives in Spain without winning many hearts and minds among the Catalans.

It is unclear whether there’s still room for a compromise, and, in any case, it will be up to the government, not the new king, to make the decisions on this matter. The only certainty is that Felipe will be associated with either its failure or its success. In this way, he is exactly like his father: Once again, the king’s fate is tied to that of his country.